Three years after the voluntary medical male circumcision (MC) campaign rolled out in the Orange Farm Township in South Africa, the first “real world” results are available showing a marked reduction of HIV acquisition among circumcised adult men and a drop in HIV incidence among men in the community of 76 percent, and prevalence among circumcised men 55 percent lower.

Earlier randomized controlled studies have show medical male circumcision to reduce the risk of men acquiring HIV through vaginal sex by up to 60 percent…

Hormonal contraceptive use associated with increased risk of HIV acquisition and increased risk of transmission from HIV-infected women to male partners

An oral abstract presentation by Heffron on behalf of the Partners in Prevention HSV/HIV Transmission Team contributed to mounting evidence that hormonal contraceptive use is associated with an increased risk of HIV acquisition by women. The study of HIV discordant couples compared couples using hormonal contraception with those who were not. Most hormonal contraceptives being used were injectable.

This study also offered the first evidence that hormonal contraceptive use by HIV-infected women may increase the risk of HIV transmission to their male sexual partners…

“[It is a basic] human right for every woman to survive pregnancy and childbirth and for their child to survive to reach their 5th birthday,” said Dr. Philippa Musoke, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist from Uganda, at the Wednesday plenary session of the 2011 International AIDS Conference in Rome. Her presentation outlined progress and challenges in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) related to reducing maternal and child mortality.

Most maternal and child deaths are associated with infectious diseases and the majority of them are preventable, she said, and sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia bear the brunt of these deaths…

The International AIDS Society (IAS) will launch a virtual media center for opioid substitution therapy (OST) support in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the organization announced Tuesday at the 2011 International AIDS Conference in Rome.

There are an estimated 16 million injection drug users (IDU) in the world, 3 million of which are HIV infected, said Dr. Chris Beyrer…

Don DesJarlais, PhD, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York opened the session on combination prevention for injection drug users (IDUs) by identifying syringe exchange programs (SEPs) as the “foundation for combination HIV prevention” in this population. To an audience Tuesday afternoon at the International AIDS Conference in Rome, he pointed out that risk elimination is not necessary because sharing syringes is still inefficient for HIV transmission. You do, however, need to reach a majority of IDUs in the population to have a real and measurable impact on HIV incidence…

There was some consensus among the Tuesday opening plenary speakers at the 2011 International AIDS Conference in Rome – there are many challenges to effective HIV prevention and antiretroviral therapy (ART) deployment.

Dr. Peter Piot, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, discussed the AIDS response and the need for a long-term view. In terms of the exciting prevention science released in the recent months, “If we had had these tools ten years or even five years ago when AIDS budgets were expanding and AIDS leadership was at an all time high, I think we would see far less AIDS deaths and far fewer people living with AIDS than we see today.”…

Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks out on treatment as prevention, pre-exposure prophylaxis and the way forward

More details were fleshed out on several compelling studies finding antiretroviral treatment is effective in preventing HIV infection – two pre-exposure prophylaxis studies as well as a large study (HPTN 052) looking at treatment of HIV infected persons in stable discordant partnerships that showed significant protection for the uninfected partner.

Science Speaks addressed these new studies and other topics Monday evening with Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Anthony Fauci at the 2011 International AIDS Society meeting in Rome.

The presentation of the detailed findings of HPTN 052 by Dr. Myron Cohen, the study’s principal investigator, and his colleagues was greeted with a standing ovation by a packed room at the 2011 International AIDS Conference in Rome on Monday. The stunning finding of a more than 96 percent reduction in transmission risk for discordant couples where the HIV-infected partner was randomized to early antiretroviral therapy (ART) at CD4 counts of 350-550 compared to couples where ART was delayed for the infected partners until CD4 counts dropped to 250 or less, makes ART the most effective prevention intervention identified to date…

In this guest blog post by Robert Yule of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, various sessions on children and HIV and prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) are reviewed, including the role of the community in prevention new infections in infants and children plus keeping mothers healthy, the challenges in developing and purchasing new pediatric formulations of antiretrovirals, and the operational and implementation challenges to scaling up PMTCT…